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A hybrid of mythology and mystery, A Wild Sheep Chase is the extraordinary literary thriller that launched Murakami's international reputation. It is the simple story of a twenty-something advertising executive that receives a postcard from a friend, and casually appropriates the image for an insurance company's advertisement. In using this image he has unwittingly captured the attention of a man in black who offers an ultimatum: find this sheep or face dire consequences. Thus begins a surreal quest where he confronts not only the mythological sheep, but the confines of tradition and the demons deep within himself.

(1989). 8vo. 1st American edition. Light wear and fading to edges of boards, with minor bumping to spine ends. Light toning to dust jacket along rear joint, and very slight fading to spine. Small crease near upper corner of rear panel. VG/VG.

On leave after the death of his wife and a job-related injury, a police inspector returns to the force when his banker nephew's fiance+a7e suddenly vanishes, and his investigation into her disappearance reveals troubling puzzles about the woman and her background. Reprint. 12,500 first printing.

As he searches for a mysteriously vanished girlfriend, Haruki Murakami's propulsive protagonist plunges into a wind tunnel of sexual violence and metaphysical dread in which he collides with call girls; plays chaperone to a lovely teenaged psychic; and receives cryptic instructions from a shabby but oracular Sheep Man. 'A tense, poignant, and often hilarious ride through the cultural Cuisinart that is contemporary Japan.'

Irreverent, post-Zen at times bizarre, the stories in this remarkable collection of Japanese fiction chart new literary and cultural territory. Contributors include Haruki Murakami, Amy Yamada, Osamu Hashimoto, Masakiko Shimada, and others. 304p.

In poetic and enthralling prose, 'Smile As They Bow' follows several characters as they attend the annual Taungbyon Festival, in which devotees from across Burma descend on a small town near Mandalay to honor the Burmese spirits known as nats. Daisy Bond, a gay transvestite medium in his fifties with a possessive nature and hot temper, has fallen in love with his young assistant; Min Min. However, Daisy soon becomes fearful of losing his much younger partner to a beautiful beggar girl in the heat of the festivities. As they make their way through a week of ritual celebrations and spirit-channeling, each much face difficult choices and determine what matters most.

With the same deep-head mania and genius for dislocation that he brought to his internationally acclaimed novels A Wild Sheep and Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, Murakami makes this collection of seventeen stories a determined assault on the normal. A man sees his favorite elephant vanished into thin air; a newlywed couple suffers attack of hunger that drive them to hold up a McDonald's in themiddle of the night; and a young woman discovers that she has become irresistible to a little green monster who burrows through her backyard - and more! 327p.

"In this sweeping magical-realist epic set in the fictional south sea island republic of Navidad, Ikezawa gives his imagination free rein to reinvent the myths of twentieth-century Japan. A delegation of Japanese war veterans pays an official visit to the ex-World War II colony, only to see the Japanese flag burst into flames. The following day, the tour bus, and its passengers, simply vanish. The locals exchange absurd rumors - the bus was last seen attending Catholic mass, the bus must have skipped across the lagoon - but the president suspects a covert gueriila organization is trying to undermine his connections withJapan. Can the real answers to the mystery be found, or will the president have to be content with the surreal answers?"--Jacket p. [2].

Arguably Japan's most important contemporary novelist, the author interviewed people who lived through the poison gas (sarin, twenty-six times as deadly as cynanide) attack on the Tokyo subway system on March 20, 1995. Through these voices, Murakami exposes intriguing aspects of the Japanese psyche. What he discerns to be the 'fundamental issues' leading to the attack evidences a clear vision of an attack that could occur: anytime, anywhere, i.e., Anthrax USA. 366p.